Strong relationships for forecasting drought in eastern Australia. February 1997.

Abstract

Strong relationships have been developed between global and local phenomena in one season and precipitation in the next season. The relations explain more than 50% of the variance in the precipitation for areas up to 500,000 square kilometres and more than 80% of the variance for smaller areas. The relations apply only to certain years which are indicated by the range in which a third variable falls. This form of forecasting based on partitioning of observed data has the potential to provide reliable three month ahead forecasts of precipitation for large regions.